Creation Mage 6 by Dante King (red scrolls of magic .TXT) 📗

Behind Nigel, Damien was crying with silent laughter.

“You never told me that your world had developed such robust travelers’ fare!” Nigel said. “I have had this burger in my pocket for days now and it has shown absolutely no sign of change. No mold, no alteration in scent or appearance. It has cheese on it, Justin! And that cheese has not fouled or gone bad, despite being exposed to the air for days. It’s a culinary marvel.”

I let out a little confused noise. I still wasn’t sure if Nigel was making some kind of joke, or if he was deadly serious. I didn’t know for sure of course, but I would have put a crisp twenty on the fact that nobody had ever referred to one of Ronald’s finest as a ‘culinary marvel’.

“What is p-p-particularly extraordinary about this foodstuff,” Nigel continued enthusiastically, “is that it contains almost no nutritional benefit and yet droves of Earthlings consumed it by the ton! What’s more, they know that this kind of traveling ration is bad for them yet continue to chow down on it with gusto! It’s incredible. Damien took me to one of the burger dispensaries and on trying my first one of these, I thought that he was trying to poison me.”

“I’d never poison you, buddy!” Damien managed to choke through his mirth, slapping the halfling Wind Mage on the back.

“Okay, n-n-not poison me, then,” Nigel admitted, “I thought though, that maybe you’d pulled a prank on me, like you did a month ago when I was hungover and you got a shart slug out of the garden, wrapped it in a lettuce leaf, and told me that it was sushi.”

Rick snorted.

Damien leaned back and said reminiscently, “Oh yeah, that was a good one.”

“Anyway,” Nigel said, returning excitedly to his point, “I ate that f-first one, and it tasted like a mixture of cardboard and poo, but then, I found myself gravitating to the idea of getting another one. It’s quite marvelous as a traveling food, don’t you see? Long-lasting, impervious to degradation, and it compels you to eat more of it, even when your brain is telling you that you’d get more out of eating the box it came in! Genius!”

“Any other highlights?” I asked, smiling at hearing this alien’s interpretation of certain facets of Earth culture.

“Well, the metal boxes that everyone zooms around in really took me back at first,” Nigel said. “I didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

“Yeah, Nigel would have been dead in about the first fifteen seconds after leaving the portal if I hadn’t been there,” Damien said matter-of-factly. “Or the Feds or C.I.A. would have scooped him up.”

Nigel flushed. “There was a lot going on,” he said defensively. “How was I meant to know that the braking capabilities of an automobile were so poor when compared to a broomstick, or even a magic carpet.”

“There’s some poor bastard of a taxi driver in Spaulding Square who is going to go to the grave swearing that he saw some bespectacled kid fly over his cab a few seconds before he was due to run him over,” Damien said. “You should have seen him on day one, Justin. Like something out of Encino Man.”

I laughed. I could definitely imagine it. The phrase, “curiosity killed the cat” had been coined for men like Nigel Windmaker.

“Yes,” Nigel said, his eyes staring far off to a different world, “there certainly was a lot to see. A lot that was familiar and yet a lot that was so different and puzzling. Like the intriguing way folk say ‘no offense’ right before they say something offensive to you—this happens so often! Or how people will organize to meet up with their fellows in bars and parks, and then sit in a circle with their eyes on their tiny screens and not talk to one another. Or how—”

“Did Damien take you to Figueroa Street?” I cut in, afraid that we were about to get sucked down a rabbit hole of Nigel’s pet peeves of American culture.

“Yes,” the halfling said, his eyes turning misty at the recollection. “It reminded me a lot of Powder Lane in a way.”

“I can see that,” I said. “But with less magic.”

“Less obvious magic,” Nigel corrected me vaguely.

I sat up a little at this declaration. Well, my head jerked up an inch from the headrest and then settled back once more.

“What do you mean by less obvious magic?” I asked.

“You guys told me that there was no magic on Earth,” Nigel said. “But I saw that you were just being lazy in your speech. There’s magic there, but deep down. More underground, you know.”

Before I could ascertain his meaning, a crashing din of the magnitude that might have accompanied a pair of armored knights wrestling down a staircase resounded through the room.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Reginald Chaosbane said with his usual roguish suavity, “may I ask you to grab your coats and jackets and beverages of choice and join me out on the lawn. Once we are gathered there, my dear cousin Mort will kick off the Yuletide festivities by carving the Yuletide Log!”

There was a scrabbling for warm coats and jackets. The afternoon was waning. The light of dusk started to fall like a spell over the sparkling, snow-covered back lawns of the ranch. Snowflakes fell with picturesque frequency from the sky. The woolen clouds had reclaimed the heavens, but off to the west, there was just enough room for the sun to peep out and stain the underside of the fluffy canopy with pink and orange light.

Very agreeable. The perfect sunset for someone who had spent the majority of their day dashing about a castle and fighting monstrous, demonic beasts of various degrees of difficulty and spite.

I followed Aunt Ruth, Leah, Reginald,